Welcome to the Course on Visible Leadership

Hello, and welcome to the course on Visible Leadership.

Understanding Common Feelings About Visibility

If you already took a big gulp of air, want to run and hide, or you're immediately feeling vulnerable when you hear the concept of visible leadership, you're not alone. Being visible is often accompanied by its close cousin, vulnerability, and waiting in the next room is often imposter syndrome.

Questions like:

• Why would anyone want to learn from me?
• Why would anyone follow my suggestions for improvement or on how to solve a problem?

If you're feeling like this, you're in good company. Being a visible leader has lots of benefits, but you may need to think through how to plan, behave, and manage when these tricky feelings want to sap your confidence.

The Evolution of Leadership

Leadership has traditionally been the purview of the most senior people in an organization. But as organizations feel greater pressure from competition and new industry entrants, the role of leadership has taken on more prominence across all levels. In fact, visible leadership is a compelling concept that's applicable to everyone within an organization.

From the Corner Office to Accessible Leadership

In the days of the corner office, leaders were heard but not seen. In modern organizations, there's an expectation that leaders are more accessible. As organizations become flatter, the need for more people within larger teams to assume and practice leadership is growing. Enter visible leadership.

The Challenge of Being Visible

Given the relentless requirement to spend a significant amount of our days in meetings, often away from our teams, a leader is challenged to make time for their people. Being visible can easily become just another checkbox on a leader's growing to-do list.

The Impact on Teams

Does this mean that for teams without visible leaders, they naturally become more accountable? You might think so, but actually, when leaders are not visible, it often means the opposite. Teams might be confused, not aligned, and may not be as productive or psychologically safe as they could be when working in an environment where leaders are visible.

The Importance of Psychological Safety

Research by Harvard Business School's Professor Amy Edmondson concluded that visible leaders create a culture of psychological safety. Psychological safety helps develop a safe-to-fail culture, which supports creativity and innovation.

About This Course

In this course, we'll be exploring visible leadership and how you, irrespective of your role and level of seniority, can learn some tools and tactics to improve your visible leadership.

Course Structure

The course comprises:

• An Introduction
• Three Lessons
• A Conclusion
• Some Homework to Consolidate Your Learning

Several concepts will be touched on. It's not meant to be an exhaustive list but rather to explore several components of visible leadership. This means you can take what you need and undertake further learning as required.

Purpose of the Course

The purpose of the course is to help you learn some concepts around visible leadership. To do that, we'll:

• Discuss why visible leadership matters
• Outline how visible leadership is intertwined with ownership and accountability for your own growth
• Highlight how visible leadership works in alignment with an organization's purpose and can become part of an organizational cadence
• Demonstrate a visible leadership plan
• Outline how visible leadership is integral to effective performance management for you and your teams
• Provide practical applications of how you can own and be accountable every day for growing your own visible leadership through a series of actions

Who Will Benefit from This Course?

New, emerging, and seasoned leaders looking for ways to define and cement your own leadership to be more visible to your people and across the organization.

Visible leadership is designed for people right across the organization because it's about how you, as an individual learner, behave and interact with your stakeholders, your leader, your clients or customers. And if you have accountability for a team, how you interact and improve your team on a day-to-day basis.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you'll:

• Understand why visible leadership is important
• Learn how to improve your own visible leadership
• Explore some everyday experiments to increase your visible leadership

About the Instructor

Hello, I'm Penelope Barr.

I've had a long and successful career across the globe in technology transformation, product change, and innovation. I'm also a big sister, so I've had lifelong training in how and when to stand up and be visible.

I'm delighted to share this course with you, and I hope you'll learn some key concepts as you go through it. I currently run a portfolio career, which sees me working in interim executive roles across several organizations and spending the rest of my time on various projects and passions. For that, I need a lot of visible leadership.

From a young age, I learned that everyone is and can be a leader; we just need to give ourselves permission to do so. So today, I'm giving that permission to you.

Conclusion

Being a visible leader is a journey that involves vulnerability, self-awareness, and a willingness to grow. Throughout this course, we'll explore the facets of visible leadership and provide you with the tools to become more confident and effective in your role.

Remember, visible leadership is not about having all the answers—it's about being present, approachable, and accountable. It's about fostering a culture where your team feels safe to innovate and grow.

Next Steps

Let's embark on this journey together. Be open to learning, experimenting, and transforming the way you lead.

See you in the first lesson!